Ghosts Next Door

Ghosts Next Door
by Lopaka Kapanui

Sep 3, 2017

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2017! #59

Grant Society case:2371 File # C11587


Zelda Rubenstein talked about memories of love and home and earthly pleasures in regards to the spirits that haunted the Freeling family house. The Correa family that lived in their Kapolei house believed the same thing about whatever it was which haunted their home because they had seen the movie, “Poltergeist.”


Much to the Correa family’s surprise, their ‘ghost’ as they called it, was not as touchy-feely as the description from the movie. In fact, the entity as I will refer to it because we were never able to determine exactly what it was, made a habit of dumping the family members of the household out of their beds in the middle of the night. Or while they were at the breakfast table enjoying their morning meal, coffee cups and glasses would shatter for no reason and the chairs would suddenly be yanked away from the table while family members were still sitting on it. At night, they could hear someone running up and down the stairs leading to and from the second floor. The family has told us that on many occasions when they go to see who or what it is that is making the noise, there is no one there but the sound of the footfalls go right past them. After a month the activity escalated to the point where their teenage children were being scratched around their body constantly. They would only feel it when they would take a shower or when they happened to be changing clothes in front of a mirror. Many denominational priests were called to perform blessings but nothing seemed to work, in fact, it only made the activity worsen. As we found out later from Steven Correa, the father of the house, he came home early from work one day and heard strange noises from the room of his oldest son Perry. When he walked into the room he found his younger son Guy and his daughter Vanessa along with Perry playing with an Ouija board which was placed on an open Satanic bible. Steven told us that he grabbed both items and threw it into the garbage bin behind his home and soaked it in kerosene and set it on fire. All three of his children received the worst beating in their life from their father, Perry and Guy were sent back to live with their biological mother in Las Vegas. Vanessa was the daughter that Steven had together with his current wife Phyllis, she was sent to live on Maui with Phyllis’ mother.

“Soon as the kids were gone,” Steven said. “All that stuff stopped.”

“Well, that’s good right?” I said to Steven while his wife served myself and my team some soda and a plate of small sandwiches.

“Well yeah, that’s very good!” Steven let out a sigh of relief and comfort.

“So, everything has stopped and gone back to normal, and it’s obvious that because of what the kids were doing, they attracted that entity to manifest in and around them, right?” I looked at both Steven and Phyllis just to confirm that they agreed with my conclusion. Phyllis and Steven looked at one another and shrugged their shoulders and validated my assessment. “So.…why call us after the fact?”

Phyllis leaned forward and spoke up this time, “Things are fine here, but whatever it was that the kids created from that Ouija board and Satanic bible.…..it followed the three of them. The two boys to Vegas and Vanessa to Maui, they’ve sent us pictures of claw marked scratches on their legs.”

Phyllis opened her phone and showed the three pictures to me and the team, the scratches were ghastly and bloody. All Steven and Phyllis Correa wanted from me was a prayer for the safety of their children, that was easy enough. Along with my team and myself, the Correas stood in the middle of our tight huddle as I offered a prayer of safety and light in Hawaiian. When it was done, we exchanged hugs with them and then they saw us to the front door where we exchanged farewells. My wife and I were the last to leave the rest of the team headed back to the van, it was only then that the thought occurred to me that I’d forgotten to give Steve and Phyllis our business card. I went to go back and saw them turn to walk back into their house just as their front door was closing. On the calves of both Steve and Phyllis, were three long horrible scratches that ran up to the back of their knees. I began to fall into a dead run like a sprinter from the starting line but my wife grabbed the back of my web belt from behind with both hands and used all of her body weight to hold me in place.

“No, no, no, no, no,” she said calm and collected. “Let it go.”

“What do you mean let it go? You saw those scratches just like I did! We can’t let it go, we have to help them!” I was insistent. My wife was smart in that she still held on to my web belt and wouldn’t let loose. By this time the team realized that we were not behind them so they came back and gathered around us.

“We can’t save everyone, my love. We’re gonna lose a few along the way and two of them just walked back into their house and we are going to do the same thing and walk back to our van,” she was hugging me now and simultaneously looking up into my eyes and slowly walking me back to our vehicle as the team followed in our practiced huddle formation. “This one is bigger than all of us and we are going to live to fight another day.”

The team agreed, “Live to fight another day boss, Kamehameha did the same thing.”

….………

The van drove through the night as we headed back to town, Andrew, Lively and John were our newest members who underwent months of training before they were finally ready to do an investigation. Andrew had the talent of psychometry while John was an empath. Lively was clairvoyant and together they were a really good bunch of kids who grew up not understanding what their abilities were and how to deal with it. My wife and I met them by chance at a sushi place where we all got our orders at the same time and went to sit at the same empty table. Rather than accept their graciousness in letting my wife and I have the spot, I invited them to join us. Lively kept staring at me the whole time until she finally burst out, “You’re the ghost guy!”

That was the icebreaker that led to us finding out about their psychic talents and inviting them to become members of the Grant Society.

 I didn’t mind playing the kind of music they liked on the van radio, it wasn’t the 70’s music that I was used to but it was bearable.

“You didn’t fail those people,” my wife reassured me. “And you did not abandon them, this is something that this family will have to go through, and at some point, they will realize that they have to call the church.”

“I know,” I groaned more than I answered, “but I feel like I didn’t even help them at all.”

“You did help them by praying for them, there is nothing more compassionate than praying for two complete strangers that you hardly know and have no reason to trust, but you did! We have to be grateful that they had the presence of mind to even ask for that much,” she leaned across and kissed me on my cheek and I kissed her back.

.............

“Give me your ring so I can pry into your private life,” Andrew demanded of Lively.

“Give me the password for your phone and I’ll give you my ring,” Lively loved being snarky to Andrew every chance she had.

Andrew looked over at John and without even making eye contact John said, “Don’t even think about asking me for anything, besides, I always lotion my hands so all you’ll get is vitamin E.”

“Uh yuck and gross geezus!” Andrew moaned and grasped his stomach

….………

My wife always left subtle clues in the things she said so that I would have time to remember the conversation later and pick everything apart. She didn’t want to scare the other three who followed behind us as we walked away from the Correa’s house, but what she was really saying was that my wanting to go back and help Steve and Phyllis would be putting our new team at risk. This was something that we had not trained them for, and so yes, we had to let it go. And yes, it was bigger than us and we couldn’t risk the harm it would cause, so, we had to walk away and live to fight another day. We had to pick and choose our battles and not fight every single one that came along, sometimes it was going to be tough, other times we’d be doing a lot more good than bad by pulling back and calling it a day.




No comments:

Post a Comment